


248. pink blushes and blue bruises

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [231]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9787253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: The bathroom of CLUB PANIC smells like garbage and armpits. Helena is crouched on the floor next to one of the stalls.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ...this has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with that title, but the title gave me the immediate and vivid image of Helena in a club bathroom so here we are.

The bathroom of CLUB PANIC smells like garbage and armpits. Helena is crouched on the floor next to one of the stalls, reading things people have written there. She is learning a lot of English words that she is very certain Alison didn’t want her to ever know. They are all very good-sounding. She likes _cunt_ , and also _pussy_. She’ll have to ask Sarah what they mean, when Sarah is done outside in CLUB PANIC and goes looking for her. People keep slamming through the swinging door into the bathroom of CLUB PANIC, and some of them are laughing, and some of them are crying, and all of them give Helena strange looks where she is crouched on the floor next to one of the stalls, and none of them are Sarah. So Helena doesn’t pay attention to them. She keeps reading.

Sarah had come into Felix’s loft looking for Felix, but there was no Felix; there was only Helena, lying on the couch, reading one of the magazines that Felix cuts up to use for Artistic Reasons. Some of the words were gone, and so when Sarah came Helena was reading an article about WAYS TO MAKE BETTER FOR YOUR MAN. Probably the word was SEX, but that’s boring, and Helena was pretending the article was about something more interesting. Like sandwiches.

Anyways, there were no sandwiches, only Sarah bursting through the door grinning in a way that usually means trouble.

“Hey,” she’d said. “Where’s Fe.”

“Out,” Helena said.

“Yeah, figured,” Sarah said. “Out _where_ , though.”

Helena dropped the magazine on her chest, the better to shrug. Sarah sighed, drummed her hands on the edge of the big metal door. “Hey,” she says. “Club Neolution.”

“Are we going back?” Helena said, sitting up, the magazine slithering down to the floor. “I liked the dancing.”

“You _did_ ,” Sarah said, she was wondering, like it was the answer to a question, like it was the answer she’d wanted. Now they’re here. Not Club Neolution (“No way in hell we can go back there, you kidding?”) but CLUB PANIC. The name is in huge bright letters on the door, all capitals, very loud, so in her brain she yells it. CLUB PANIC! which is full of flashing lights and bodies that want to know other bodies and drinks that Helena probably shouldn’t touch, after last time, with the broken bones and the police. She ate seven marshino cherries, which are like cherries only sweeter, and then she looked for Sarah in the crowd but Sarah wasn’t there so she danced for a little while but everyone was mad at her, because of her elbows, and now she’s in the bathroom. She likes it here. She also smells like armpits; she feels kinship.

The bathroom door bangs open again, loud against the wall, and Helena is reading about what Sherry will do for anyone who calls her telephone number, and then there’s an arm around her shoulder only it’s Sarah’s arm so she’s calm again before she can even start thinking about breaking the fingerbones dangling by her face.

“Christ, meathead,” Sarah says, exhaling it like a laugh. She shakes Helena. She also smells like armpits, but also like the burned-sweet alcohol that Sarah likes best. “This where you been hidin’?”

“I do not hide,” Helena says, and lets herself be shaken.

“I was looking for you!” Sarah yells in Helena’s ear. “Come _on_ , we’re s’posed to be dancing, that’s the whole point of this, yeah?”

“I use too many elbows,” Helena says. Actually she yells it, in the spirit of things. People in the bathroom are giving them strange looks. They are all _cunts_.

“Yeah, I know,” Sarah says, and it sounds like a laugh again, and Helena can’t tell if Sarah is laughing at Helena or the people Helena is going to hit in the face with her elbows or just laughing because she’s happy to be here. Sarah is hard to understand, but: her arm is around Helena’s shoulder, and that is a good thing. It makes all the maybe-bad things less bad.

“Sarah,” Helena says.

“Yeah?”

“If I hit somebody with my elbows, and they are angry, can I fight them.”

Sarah full-on laughs and stands up, holds out her hands to pull Helena to her feet. “Only if you think you can win,” she says. “God knows I’ve been to the bloody ER enough times on a Saturday night. I’m not takin’ you. Got it?”

“Very clear,” Helena says. “Like crystals.” She pauses, gnaws on her lips in consideration. “I think I will win fight against everyone here.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Sarah says, and tugs Helena back outside to CLUB PANIC, where in the music someone is yelling about pussies and hoes. Helena lets herself get tugged. When this is over, she is going to ask Sarah what _hoe_ means.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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